Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 5.008
May 19, 1995

1) Introduction (Henny Lewin)
2) Trip to Lithuania (Henny Lewin)
3) Miyes, miyeskeit (Paul Ritterband)
4) Miuskeit (Michael Shimshoni)
5) Melupm (Dovid Braun)
6) Russian-Yiddish dictionary (Jack Feldman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
From: hlewin@polyglot.uvm.edu
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 19:21:35 -0400EDT
Subject: Introduction

I was born in Kovno to Yone and Gite (Salat)  Wisgardisky. We went into
the Kovner ghetto when I was 1.5 years old. I was hidden by my parents in
the apartment and 2 years later smuggled out to their Lithuanian friends.
Luckily both parents survived  and we were reunited . We were in a D.P.
camp in Germany several years, lived in Israel for four years and came to
Montreal in 1953. I went to a Hebrew High and spoke Yiddish at home. I
also studied Yiddish and Hebrew at the United Jewish Teachers Seminary. I
came to the USA in 1963. I teach Hebrew and Yiddish at the University of
Vermont and am director of Hillel and the  Jewish Action Coalition.

Henny Lewin

2)----------------------------------------------------
From: hlewin@polyglot.uvm.edu
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 20:12:21 -0400EDT
Subject: Trip to Lithuania

I am going back to Lite for the first time  and am very apprehensive
about it. I plan to fly to Riga where my daughter is spending the  year
and from there on to Vilne and Kovne (my birth city) .It is the Jewish
historical places that interest me. I plan to go to the 9th fort were my
paternal grandparents and other relatives were killed, to where the
ghetto was, etc.  I would very much like to track down the family of
Yonas Stankiewitz,  the rightious gentiles, who had harbored me as their
own child and  with whom we lost contact long ago.

I also plan to travel to Shilel, the Lithuanian shtetl where my mother
was born (it is near Meml)  and where my maternal grandparents were
buried . I do not speak  Lithuanian or Russian but do speak Yiddish and
German .

Does anyone have any suggestions or contacts in order to make this a more
successful "expedition"?

A hartzikn dank.

Henny Lewin

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 20:18:31 EST
From: uap@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Subject: Miyes, miyeskeit

See the Hallel, based on psalms "The stone which the builders rejected [ma'asu
habonim] has beccome the cornerstone".

Paul Ritterband

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 May 95 12:03:34 +0300
From: mash@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il
Subject: Miuskeit

Berel  Leiser  (Mendele  5.007)  writes  about  Miuskeit  and  related
subjects to which out of my ignorance I have nothing to contribute.  I
just wish to point out that his guess at the end:

>The Hebrew origin of these terms is quite simple:  The root is mem, alef,
>samekh.  The word "ma'as" and its many derivatives appear frequently
>throughout the Tanakh, always with the implication of despising,
>rejecting, or repudiating som ething or someone.  So far as I can
>determine, the Biblical uses of the word ar e all verbs, never nouns or
>adjectives.

is only almost correct.   By my Even Shoshan dictionary I was directed
to Eikha (Lamentations?) 3,45 where it appears as a noun.   I have not
checked in a Bible Concordance if there are further occurrences in the
form of a noun or adjective.

Michael Shimshoni

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 01:57:54 EDT
From: dovid@mit.edu
Subject: Melupm

I have forgotten (or maybe I never knew) what the dot towards the middle
of the Hebrew vav is called *in Hebrew* (in Yiddish we call it a
melupm-vov, as has been noted).  The nekuda is definitely not referred to
as a dagesh when it abuts the vav.

But here's a note on the Yiddish word.  Aside from the Yiddish spelling
mem-lamed-vov-pey-nun for the word in question, there's another spelling
that is probably truer to the etymology of the word:
mem-lamed-alef-pey-vov-mem. As a Hebrew/Aramaic compound, I'd read it
[melo' pum] which means 'fullness of mouth', i.e. apparently referring to
the glide /w/ or the vowel /u/.  If this is indeed where the word comes
from, then the former spelling reflects a partial loss of common
knowledge of the word's etymology -- it was felt to be of Hebrew/Aramaic
origin (hence the not completely phonemic spelling) but the exact
spelling was lost.  (In other cases, a word not of H/A origin at all has
been 'felt' to be of H/A origin and thus receives an etymologically
unjustified non-phonemic spelling, such as _kundes_.)

I hope a Hebrew grammarian pipes up with more precise information.

Dovid Braun

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 13:57:21 -0700
From: feldman@math.berkeley.edu
Subject: Russian-Yiddish dictionary

This is a little off the point, but:

Perhaps 20 years ago I saw, at the UCBerkeley library, ona pile of
books-for- disposal, a Russian-Ukrainian-Yiddish mathematical dictionary.
I could have bought it, but didn't, God knows why, and the opportunity
passed. Has anyone else ever heard of or seen such a dictionary?

Jack Feldman

______________________________________________________
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